Dr. Coltan Scrivner

I have no idea how I am talking to you from thousands of miles away, and I could not rebuild that if I needed to.

That's a complete mystery to me.

But I probably would not be able to make a documentary that 100 million people would watch if I made a documentary about podcasting or about how microphones work or about how video cameras work.

But if you can make a podcast about any random serial killer, you'll get 100 million views on it pretty easily, right?

So there are certain kinds of mysteries in life that we are more drawn to, and we tend to be most drawn to mysteries that unveil something about, in particular, dangerous people, but also other kinds of dangerous situations, natural disasters or...

You know, aliens are kind of big in the news right now with all the disclosure stuff in the US going on, and are they potentially dangerous or not dangerous?

So stories about things that can hurt us or might hurt us if we were to encounter them tend to be the types of mysteries that we are most intrigued by, most interested in, and sort of hunger for the most in the media landscape.

I think there are a few answers to that.

So one is that most true crime stories focus a bit on the killer and their thoughts, right?

Why did they do what they do?

That's one of the questions that a lot of true crime stories, whether it's a podcast or a

They focus on trying to answer why did the killer do what they did and how did they get to that point?

Right.

And if you look across the data in psychology on things like empathy or perspective taking, women tend to score a bit higher in that.

So on average, women score higher in things like perspective taking.

They score higher in interest in other people than men do.

So I think that's one part of the picture is that you're telling a story that's very human, right?

You're telling a story that's about two people in some sort of interaction.

And so I think that tends to skew toward women a bit more.

But I don't think that explains the full picture.